Policing the Recovery

New spending funneled through the Justice Department is described in less than two pages and involves about $3.7 billion. Almost all of this is in the form of transfers to state and local law-enforcement agencies through existing programs, including $1 billion for “community oriented policing services.” These funds are meant to help crisis-hit states and municipalities to avoid dismissals of police officers or other reductions in police services as they cope with the recession.

There are several earmark-like designations within the broad allocations. One provides $40 million in competitive grants for local law enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border, “of which $10 million shall be transferred” to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for its “Project Gunrunner,” which has obviously been named for its Hollywood-treatment possibilities.

A second carve-out, less cinematic, is a $225 million allocation to the “Violence Against Women Prevention and Prosecution Programs” at Justice, including $50 million for “transitional housing assistance grants for victims of domestic violence, stalking or sexual assault.” Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden were among the Congressional Democrats who supported the Violence Against Women Act signed into law by George W. Bush in 2005. The act supports a multi-faceted program of grant-making, training, and other work overseen by the Violence Against Women Office at the Office of Justice Programs, which interacts with state and local law enforcement. This should increase its budget substantially—so far as I can tell, it was previously funded at a level of about $375 million per fiscal year.

In a short time, O.J.P. has already put up a useful Web page describing its piece of the stimulus bill and where the funds will go. If the rest of the federal bureaucracy and the Obama Administration’s nascent recovery.gov site—which is supposed to be its clearing house for transparent tracking of the funds, but which so far feels a bit heavy with political messaging and salesmanship—do as well as O.J.P.’s little page, it will go some way toward fulfilling the Administration’s pledges.

Steve Coll, a staff writer, is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and reports on issues of intelligence and national security in the United States and abroad. He is the author of “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.”